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The Florists^ Review 



JUNE 27, 1912. 



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A YOUNG MAN'S OPPORTUNITIES 

 Ml IN THE SEED BUSINESS ^ 



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WHY THEY ARE EXCELLENT. 



Based on the Nation's Food Supply. 



The treatment of the subject, "A 

 Young Man's Opportunities in the Seed 

 Business," will naturally lead us to the 

 consideration of 



(1) The nature of the seed business' 



(2) Its volume or extensity and the 

 outlook for its growth 



(3) The requirements it imposes upon 

 the young man, and 



(4) Its serviceableness as a means 

 to the higher end of a fully developed 

 career, viz., the service of society. 



The most conspicuous characteristic 

 that we note when we consider the na- 

 ture of the seed business is its perma- 

 nency. It is obvious that it is not 

 founded on any passing fancy, on a fad, 

 but is founded on a necessity, a continu- 

 ing and growing necassity. People must 

 be fed and it invariably requires, and 

 always will require, seeds to produce 

 the food with which to feed them. The 

 business, therefore, is not subject to 

 the caprice of fashion. The popula- 

 tion constantly increasing, there are re- 

 quired constantly more food and more 

 seeds. And as the population spreads 

 out over the plains and the grazing 

 areas are reduced and stock raising 

 curtailed, the cost of meat becomes 

 so excessive that consumption of the 

 products of the soil increases and the 

 demand for seeds grows proportion- 

 ately. . 



The seed business, then, has its basis 

 in a fundamental need of humanity; — 

 the need of food. Now, as to its 

 volume. 



My father's debut in seed growing, 

 only just prior to the Civil war, was 

 with a crop of cabbage seed, all of 

 which he cured in the front parlor. I 

 distinctly remember his account of his 

 early experiences in growing sweet corn 

 for seed when his annual output was 

 one bu^el, and his list of custwners 

 could h4 counted on the fingers Of one 

 hand, of whom the principal ones were 

 Mr. Schlegel, of Boston, and Mr. Hen- 

 derson, of New York. I suppose that 

 there were at that time, hardly more 

 than fifty years ago, not more than a 

 dozen concerns in this country engaged 

 in the seed business. Today there are 

 probably a thousand. The extensity 

 of the business and its growth would 

 become still more apparent if I could 

 give figures showing the values of seeds 

 handled, but unfortunately such data 

 are not available. It follows, however, 

 from the facts we have already con- 

 sidered that the industry must grow 

 with growth of population, as indeed we 

 know from experience to be the fact. 

 Growth of population, consumption of 

 food, demand for seed, these have an 

 intimate inter-relationship; each fol- 

 lows as a necessary corollary of the 

 preceding. 



The Outlook For Growth. 



But what of the outlook for further 

 growth, and is the field already over- 

 crowded? The young man entering the 

 seed business will not find the same 



A paper by Arthur B. Clark, president of 

 the Everett B. Clark Co., Mllford, Mass., 

 read before the American Seed Trade Asso- 

 ciation at the Chicago convention, June 25 

 to 27. 



congestion that he would encounter 

 were he to embark upon the practice 

 of law or of medicine. He will, to be 

 sure, encounter competition, and plenty 

 of it for all his practical purposes, but 

 he will also find as^ much business as 

 competition; that is, new and other 

 business that the ci^mpetitor has not 

 been able to develop, or, engrossed as he 

 has been with his own business, has 

 not had the foresight to develop. More- 

 over, he may find new fields in which 

 to develop the seed business. There 

 will be opportunities for an army of 

 young men in equipping the state of 

 Texas alone with seed stores as well as 

 New England is today equipped, and 

 does anyone doubt that the day is to 

 come when such equipment will be war- 

 ranted and well supported? Texas, with 

 its broad expanse of fertile soil with 

 unbounded possibilities for the pro- 

 duction of a wide range of crops, where 

 it is claimed that a Texas farm will 

 profitably produce every form of plant 

 life that thrives out of doors, and three 

 crops within a year — that state in 

 which, having boarded a fast train in 

 the evening, you ride all night, all day, 

 and all night again, and still, Texas and 

 Texas farm land, where one of our 

 New England counties, even with the 

 rocks and ledges replaced with fertile 

 soil, would make but a small sized farm. 

 And not Texas alone, but Oklahoma, 

 Louisiana and that whole vast south- 

 west with its long reaches of farming 

 areas. 



Then there is the northwest, even 

 remaining on this side of the border 

 and under our own flag. The state of 

 Montana, an empire in itself, just in its 

 awakening, just beginning to realize 

 its possibilities through irrigation, 

 where thousands of acres are being 

 brought under ibe irrigation ditch every 

 year. And the state of Oregon, into 

 which the mighty state of New York 

 could until now have been set without 

 touching a railroad and still embrace 

 naught but good farming land — that is, 

 land capable of development into good 

 farms. Now this broad undeveloped 

 area is being traversed by an extension 

 of the Union Pacific system and a world 

 of opportunities unfolded to the young 

 man in the seed business. So, with all 

 these undeveloped fields coming into de- 

 velopment, there is ample opportunity 

 for the exercise of one's energy, busi- 

 ness and executive abilities, and capital. 



Few Failures Among Seedsmen. 

 In point of view of the returns that 

 the young man may expect from the 

 exercise of his ability, the seed busi- 

 ness affords average opportunities. It 

 is not a gold mine — it does not afford 

 encouragement of sudden accession to 

 a great fortune; neither is it particu- 

 larly speculative — except for us seed 

 growers — not greatly more so, at least, 

 than most classes of business, and not 

 so much so as it sometimes superficially 

 appears. As there are few instances of 



men acquiring great wealth through the 

 seed business, there are likewise com- 

 paratively very few failures among 

 seedsmen. The business affords a re- 

 liable, steady, moderately remunerative 

 means of livelihood. 



The young man will properly inquire 

 what requirements the seed business 

 will impose upon him, what equipment 

 he must bring to the work. 



In i;he first place, must he have cap- 

 ital, thit" is, will capital be a pre- 

 requisite? In the seed business as in 

 almost every business, capital will be a 

 useful commodity to have, land, of 

 course, essential to any extended de- 

 .v'eldpmsnt of the business, but by no 

 means is it a sine qua non of success 

 in the seed business that the young man 

 have capital at the outset — ^by no means 

 is the lack of capital an effectual bar 

 to the successful plying of the indus- 

 try. Many a poor young man without 

 a dollar to invest has entered the seed 

 business by sweeping out the store, 

 running errands, and clerking, or by 

 weeding onions and beets till his back 

 and fingers ached, or setting out turnips 

 in the cold, raw wind of a New England 

 spring day, or by arising before sunrise 

 on the Fourth of July to celebrate by 

 breaking his back cutting turnip seed 

 while the dew is yet on. But if he 

 have the metal that rings true, he will 

 be wanted and his services will com- 

 mand a fair return and the capital will 

 come. 



Scope for Keen Intellect. 



The young man, if he be a man of 

 energy, of keen intellect, or of scien- 

 tific ability, will want to know what 

 opportunity the seed business affords 

 for the profitable application of these 

 qualifications. Such a young man does 

 not want to get into a life work where 

 everything is done by rule of thumb 

 just as his fathers have always done 

 ever since the memory of man runneth 

 not to the contrary. He wants a field 

 of endeavor where his mental ability 

 may find profitable employment, where 

 study, originality, and new ideas wisely 

 applied shall count. Such a young man 

 will find a large field for his labors 

 in the seed problem. He need have no 

 fear that he will exhaust the field of 

 labor and study. Any one of us who 

 has had even a few years' experience 

 in the seed business, appreciates how 

 appalled one becomes at the impossi- 

 bility of mastering this profession of 

 seed production and distribution, for 

 one becomes so engrossed with the per- 

 functory details of the conduct of his 

 business — the executive demands on 

 one's time in order to operate the busi- 

 ness on a profitable basis — that innu- 

 merable suggestions for study and re- 

 search have to be brushed to one side 

 unheeded. I know in my own case cer- 

 tainly every year's work unfolds more 

 fields of investigation and study, trial 

 and demonstration, than time permits, 

 or, at least, the imperative demands 

 on my time preclude giving many of 

 these matters the exhaustive investiga- 

 tion that they deserve. I feel- sure that 



COontinued on page 54.1 



